Defining Hospitality

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Dan Ryan: Today's guest as a passion for design he's an industry thought leader. He has extensive global experience in designing mixed use developments. He is a V senior vice president of design for Equinox brands at Equinox, ladies and gentlemen, Aaron Richter. Welcome Erin. Thank you, Dan. Appreciate it.
I'm going to be here. How do all those accolades feel coming out of here?
Aaron Richter: I like I'm tired of it and you can feel tired.
Dan Ryan: Well, well, that's a good, that's a great place to start. I'm tired because I would say tired. [00:01:00] You've had a long journey and career, and I, I remember meeting you way back at, um, star in the Starwood days.
Would that really awesome crew that did this diaspora of amazingness all over the industry? So, um, it's been a, it's been a long journey to get where you are now. And then another thing on the tired part, which I think we'll talk a lot about with respect to wellness and Equinox. So much of what you guys are doing at Equinox.
And I want to hear it from your own words is all about like restoring and regenerating. And I feel like that's missed in so many aspects of kind of what we do. So why don't we just start there to kind of contextualize, how do you restore? How is Equinox restoring?
Aaron Richter: Yeah, sure. And I appreciate that. Um, you know, I think early on we wanted to figure out what, what we wanted to offer or what our positioning, our point of view wanted to be about a hotel.
And, you know, we, we do movement, well, we've done movement well for [00:02:00] years and we're known for movement and we're known for fitness and that sort of thing. But it really, at the end of the day, the, what we're selling is a longer REM cycle. That really that's, that's what it comes down to. And if you can provide someone a better night's sleep.
And, and all of the accoutrement that go with that, whether it's the, the, the, how you get to sleep or how you wake up a longer REM cycle is a better recovery. And, and so how do you do that? Right. So, and then that's a, that's a knowable science, right? Sleep science is knowable science, right? There's been a lot of good research into sleep and, and, and a lot of things that you can execute from a, from an architectural and interior design standpoint, and from a programming standpoint, how do you, how do you lean into that?
And that's where we began.
Dan Ryan: I love that. And it's kind of like peeling an onion back to how do you get it? So it also going into the long journey and bringing you back to Starwood, I've spoken to many people and it's, it's a little, like [00:03:00] there's only so many things you can really do with a hotel, right? So much of it comes down to like, okay, this is where I'm going to sleep, but I've heard people say that, you know, and it's kind of sad in a way that one of the most innovative things that has happened in our industry.
Um, in a really long time was the development of the heavenly bed now is at Starwood. Right. And that's like, oh my God. That's like a no brainer. Like that's what you're sleeping on. So yeah. How, how are you guys peeling back the onion and taking it to the next level and being so much more innovative for giving people the gift of deep REM
Aaron Richter: sleep?
Well, that, that's where it started for me is where, um, it was Barry, of course it was, it was talking about what's important to the traveler. And at the time you wouldn't, no one spent money on beds. Like they were a, an OSD item that was often like a very, very, oh, we got to have one, right? And Barry's like, no, you have to have the best one.
And that's what people want when the lights go [00:04:00] off and you're in the bed, that's really where it started. And I was like, okay, that, that stuck with me. And then I had done a project in the park lane hotel in London. With a young designer named Patrick Dwan, who was, uh, a guy who he was, uh, uh, designed for Vesta.
And he was a fleet stark protege, and he does young, amazing French talent. This got him in his partner. Sanjeet they run a firm out there who I still love. And I hired them to do this concept modern concept in, in London, and a big part of it was this sort of central command technology, which really wasn't didn't exist at the time.
It was like the sort of like you put your key card in and it would have the room temperature and the menu, and it would control the room dynamics and we developed it. But a critical aspect of that development was a guy called, uh, uh Xeikon and he, it was a fuse, a French scientist who we brought in on the team and he had this alarm clock that he had developed [00:05:00] that would, um, wake you up over an hour long process.
Dan Ryan: Ah, it would like slowly Brighton.
Aaron Richter: It was that one. It would slowly brighten. It was slowly changed. The, if, no, for him, it was like it was alarm clock. So it was a thing you could buy a plug it in and it would slowly brighten and change the color temperature and slowly introduce sound into the morning, wake up routine.
It was a plug-in play product. And we said, oh my goodness. Let's how do we cook this into the wall? And so we worked with him to not only did that. That piece and how it ties into the room, my mechanics, but then I'm like, well, what else do you want it to do? And he's like, well, if I could have my druthers, I would have changed the temperature.
I would have it, you know, do these other things that go to show you that I'm getting a longer REM cycle. So we built it into a model room. This was, you know, I don't know, 1999, I don't know, way back in 2000, I don't know, early. And, uh, and we built them all in a room and the whole thing ended up [00:06:00] being too expensive to get done.
And it didn't happen for a variety of reasons, but w but we built it and it worked. And we've been sort of it's in the bag in the back of my mind for awhile that the room could be tuned, tuned really to your, your, your body rhythms, to, uh, to allow you to have a better night's sleep. Uh, so I've been trying to solve it.
Dan Ryan: And where are you in that process? Now? As far as what the product
Aaron Richter: did check Gunston, we did about, I would say added the, the larger. Machinations of what's important for sleep science. And probably we did about half of what we wanted to do in the room and even half as heroic. Right. Did he get that done? Was you got to convince a lot of people who build hotels that you're, you're spending money in place you don't typically spend money on.
And so, uh, I, I say if I have done the thinking around what can be done is definitely still percolating and what, and we, [00:07:00] we piloted a bunch of stuff. We just simply couldn't afford a lot of that has to do with circadian lighting and, uh, uh, and, uh, uh, quantum harmonics and other things that we kind of toyed with that we, we still like to do, you know, getting a more intelligent room and then also getting into the psychology of, of, of dream analysis as something a further sort of flat tow that we'd like to get into.
So a we're we're about out, we're probably about a third of the way where we'd want to be in terms of, of what we can do. Um, and so, yeah, no, we're, we're still cracking at it
Dan Ryan: and it's, it must be an interesting and almost difficult proposition to sell to. Uh, investors or other stakeholders in the property, because oftentimes it's not like you're sleeping.
How do you really know? How do you measure that it's effective? I'm actually very curious
Aaron Richter: about that. Yeah. There's ways to digitally measure, sleep cycles. There's wearables and there's mattress smart mattresses out there. We don't provide any metrics on the sleep, although we probably. [00:08:00] Could and should in the future.
Um, but
Dan Ryan: w would it be more like guest feedback? Like, oh my God, I had the best night's sleep. Are you getting feedback
Aaron Richter: that hundred percent? We get that feedback daily. Yeah. No that's and you got to understand there's a lot in the room around sleep. So if you don't get, if you get a bad night's sleep there, I haven't heard that from a single guest.
Right. It's the most acoustically isolated product in the industry on purpose. Right. It's, it's the most it's removal of all the acoustical and light pollution. It's the right materials. It's the methodology of sleep. It's the rituals that we developed to go to sleep, to wake up. It's the, it's all of it.
And, and, uh, and so yeah, the feedback has been fantastic. And the, and what's interesting is yes, it's hard to answer your question. Yes. It's harder to convince a developer do any of this a hundred percent. The good news is developer was also our money. And so, you know, that we, you know, like early days of w and it was, you know, Uh, it was easy to spend your own money.
Uh, here, we had to convince our own internal [00:09:00] group that that was the right thing to do. Now it's super easy because what happens now is we get developers globally showing up and very quickly saying I get it right. It's really hard to argue when it's abstract and it's just a spreadsheet. And it's like, oh, well, no, this is important when they come here and they stay here.
And if they spend the night here, they're like, how quickly can we develop one of these? Like, we turn them very quickly,
Dan Ryan: especially, probably for their own bedroom at their own home,
Aaron Richter: a hundred percent. And so what's interesting for low hanging fruit for us is that I would say nine out of the 10 developers are working with her saying, well, you're going to also brand our residential product because, uh, this all makes sense.
Everything you're doing here, it makes perfect sense for residential
Dan Ryan: product. Oh my goodness. So then you could have a sleep sanctuary by Equinox in your home. Oh, my God. That's amazing. Yeah. And that's actually happening.
Aaron Richter: It's happened while we're doing our own residences, so that's [00:10:00] happening. But we talked about during pandemic, we talked about doing an off the shelf product that would, would, you could put into an Airbnb, right?
As I talked to Airbnb, victim Mari, and a bunch of Airbnb folks, and they were getting, they didn't get their heads around, but I was like, all right, well, imagine you had a Airbnb that was walking distance from a club right near that owner of that house. And you're like, okay, well, I'm going to make my house a Equinox infused house.
And that means it's going to have sleep chambers and it's going to have the right food stock in the fridge and why you're staying with me. You also can walk to the Equinox or ride your bike to the Equinox. And you were a member during that time. Oh. And you started thinking about real estate strategy in a whole different way.
And so instead of like, and so in markets where you can't develop a 212 room tower, like in Berkeley, right? You buy a bunch of neighboring private. Um, and you Airbnb them. Right? And you, you make them associated with the, with the, with the club. I, you know, [00:11:00] my inspiration for that as Hasidic Jews, the guys who have, well, the, you know, if you're acidic, you're you want to, you need to live walking distance from temple.
Yes. Right. And so communities are built around the walkability to temple on certain days. And so you think about how, how a community works and how a community has to be kind of together. And you're like, okay, well that can be, you can apply that to anything.
Dan Ryan: And the Hasidic community as well, has like figured out ways to expand that territory.
But I forget what the wires are called, that they got around to make their communities even bigger. That's right. That's right. Oh, I love that. I got to figure it out. I'll put it in the show notes. I'll find out what that thing is. I read a great article on that. So that's super awesome. I didn't even think about that now from the Airbnb perspective, we're
Aaron Richter: not doing, we're not, we're not doing it right there.
Allow laughed at me.
Dan Ryan: No, I know they, they, they might not want to [00:12:00] do it, but it's always going to do it. But if you can get someone like I've met a guy in London, he owns a bunch of Airbnbs that he puts out. I don't know, he's got 20 or 40 or 50 or something like that. But if they're all, they're probably all within, uh, an area.
So it could be some kind of cool capital expenditure that he might consider doing for his properties, that he has
Aaron Richter: a common interest. Yeah. You need to lean into and S and exaggerate the common interest right there. There's a reason everyone's, you know, if you just build a hotel and people go to it. Okay.
They're there. Cause I mean, Atlanta. And that's one way to go about it, but like, if it's more purpose-built or if it's built around a common activity in that area, then you can service those things in a different way. And you can, you can celebrate different parts of them, right. As a, as a, as a, as a, you know, a community.
Dan Ryan: Um, and when I think of Equinox and just the community or tribe that you guys have built from [00:13:00] movement or working out, and just that whole feel and experience applying it to hotels, it just seems like such a slam dunk. And, and again, going back to the title of this podcast of defining hospitality, there's a way that people feel from the time that they're anywhere near.
Cause I still get buzzers, like you're near an Equinox. I'm like, oh yeah. And then I, you know, you go in and then how you feel when you're in there and then just the whole experience. So when you think about just all the different people who are going into restore or going into spend energy. How do you define hospitality for, for those different tribes of people that are coming into your, into your
Aaron Richter: sanctuaries?
Yeah, I think, well, first you have to know who your tribe is, You got to understand who they are and what their hopes and dreams are. And then it's a really, it's a consideration of what they're going through and it's kind of a celebration of their rituals and their routines and, [00:14:00] people, are, waking up again to the fact that, oh, I should take care of myself.
My health is important. My immunity is important in my, this is all very, topical and germane at the moment, People are saying, I want to live a different way. Right? Me being shit face at the pool. At a lounger is not the pinnacle of existence anymore. And that used to be how you would organize a hotel.
You'd start with, I need to get 120 loungers that pool of people to get shit faced at, and I'm going to sell drinks and that's going to be, my ROI is going to be all FMB and fuck the room and, you know, whatever that, anything else. And that's it, you're coming in to get drunk. Right? You're coming here, you're drunk.
That's it? And so like, I'm like, that's not, uh, that's not it anymore. That's not how people want to be anymore. They want to travel with their families. They want to travel and feel healthier. After they traveled in the less healthier they're trying to make their lives, then their experiences better and more [00:15:00] fulfilling.
And if, if, if we recognize that we recognize that most of the product out there, the sort of same, same product out there is based on an ROI that was done back in the second fifties or sixties where God even knows when, and that's how that's monies on top of money. Just funneling it down the same ROI chain.
So then,
Dan Ryan: so once you, okay, so you, you guys that Equinox and unrelated have clearly defined your tribe, your marketing, right. You know who they are, you got your people, so then how do you,
how do you help? But I guess it's like, okay, so you know, the people, you know, the market, like you said, and then it's like, how do you, how do you define what hospital.
Aldi is to that group. I
Aaron Richter: net well, I mean, in a weird way, we don't, we don't define it for them in a, in a way we are enabling them. Right. We, there's a, there's a way to be. [00:16:00] Healthy. There's a way to live a healthy lifestyle. And it's, it's, it's often it's it's habits. It's routine. It's it's, it's, it's a method of attacking the day.
It's I'm going to carve out two hours here. I do a thing in the morning. I do a thing at night it's it's, it's part of my it's part of my routine. And, and those routines are near impossible on the road, right? If you, if anyone who's listening and your travel, or I'm a traveler, if you want to try to stay fit on the road, the, the world, the road hates you, the road hates it, hates it, and it doesn't want anything to do with it.
And it doesn't want to hear about it. You're in a, if you want to work out, you'd go to the fucking basement with 400 square feet in the basement and it's carpeted. And as a preppy guy down, there is no natural light and it's not important. What you're doing is an important, right. Eating healthy. Isn't important, right?
You go into the fridge and get a Snickers, like whatever, you know, whatever, you know, list your sleeps on borders. A couple next to you having a fight in the next room and you can hear them, you know, that you're, it's not important. [00:17:00] What's important. Me and you drank right. That's the industry and that's wrong.
And it might've been right, you know, 20 years ago. And that's what does, you know, the pinnacle of life was, but that's not it anymore. Right. So I think everything needs to sort of rethink itself in terms of, of putting themselves in the shoes of all of this sort of new wave of people. And it's not age it's, it's not at all age.
It's, uh, it's just a sensibility of people wanting to live a more fulfilling life.
Dan Ryan: I totally agree. And, and I have, I agree being on the road is not healthy, but I got to say that in the pandemic and having my wings clipped all of that movement to, and from the plane and running to this and that. I miss all that movement and that, and now, now we're all getting back and our wings are resprouting and I'm just feeling more active,
Aaron Richter: right?
No, I will know. I think people want to get their adult on hard. I think people want to like, [00:18:00] oh my God, it's going to be, I think I had another talk. I'm like, it's going to be a flesh orgy. It's just going to people going if shit like going and in a wonderful way. Yeah.
Dan Ryan: I, I was like, it's going to be this bucking all of just wear G and like, yeah.
Aaron Richter: It's but togetherness is, is a, not an unimportant thing. Being with other people is part of being a human being. I think it's being social as being important. Is it important for your wellbeing? For sure. And so if you're, if you're traveling and you're going to a hotel. And you're like, okay, well I'm at this hotel.
Like, what do I do now? Okay. I go down to the restaurant and I have, and I, and I have dinner and I get, I get drunk again or whatever. And I, and uh, and then I go to my room. You're not really part of that community. Like if I go to the hotel in Seattle, I was Zeta hotel in Seattle, I'm in the hotel and I believe.
And experienced the community at all. I've just, I might've been like some local Seattle artists slapped on the wall and they're like, oh, it's, it's indigenous. Right. Whatever. [00:19:00] And so, but, but what's the unlock for us. And I think it's going to, it should be an unlock on for everybody on a variety of levels is when I travel, I want to dovetail into that community, like really dovetail into that community.
And what that means is that I need to be doing what those people in the community you're doing for us. That's fitness and wellness. Right? So, uh, w when you land in Hudson yards and you came from Berlin and you go downstairs and you work out in the club and we get about 60% of our hotel guests that use the club and you get down and you use the club and it is on fire.
And the people are going hard and people are fit and they look great and they're motivated. And then it's there all the locals who define that environment. It's a real, it's a community people. There they go there every Monday, they see each other, you go to a group fitness class, there's comradery, And you're you dovetail in the community and.
Don't
Dan Ryan: get, did your office move from flat iron over to Hudson yards already? Yeah.
Aaron Richter: And in [00:20:00] 2019 we opened August, 2019. We opened the corporate office, the health club, the hotel, and the co-working in the same month, which was crazy. And
Dan Ryan: then you moved there at the same time we did. Yeah. We moved
Aaron Richter: to the Quora the
Dan Ryan: same time.
So, cause I remember being in flat and my office was right there and I remember bumping into you at the gym at weird hours and just, Hey, what's up? How's that working out? So are you going down to that pumping gym in the
Aaron Richter: yes. When I'm healthy? Yeah, for sure. We're employees, we're encouraged. We encourage our employees to go down.
Right. So we, we have. Uh, we have built in on the corporate floors. We've built in, uh, private lockers for every employee. So if you bring your shit to the office, you can just dump it in a locker. You don't have to throw your desk and it's your locker. So you can be your shoes there all the time. Uh, so when we're, we're absolutely encouraging people to, to do that, we also encourage people to bring their own food.
We've got full kitchens on every floor, uh, cooking kitchens. We've got, uh, pantries on every floor, hydration stations. We, we lean into how to make a healthy office here, here, [00:21:00] here at corporate. And we're real proud of what we did.
Dan Ryan: That's awesome. Um, actually, as you're saying that, I just read this article today.
This guy, Josiah McKinsey, who I just met at a Skift conference for the first time he wrote this really cool article. I'll send it to you after. And I totally agree with it. I've been saying it, I've been speaking around this in a lot of different ways, but I think he really hit the nail on the head. And his, the title is why hospitality is the best place to work, invest, and innovate now, and in the years ahead.
So I would just like to take your temperature on that one. Do you agree strongly? Like how are you feeling as far as hospitality being the best place to work, invest and innovate over now and in the years ahead,
Aaron Richter: strongly agree. However, what is hospitality anymore? Right. So everything's hospitality these days, everyone's racing towards the same space, right?
Whether there's this, there's like a city bank at union square, you know, this thing is [00:22:00] awful. It's I don't know design it, but it's like, it's got like, it's everything. It's like, oh, it's a cafe. And it's a lounge. It's a paid, it's a fucking it's, it's every it's anything it needs to be. And that's just a bunch of panics executives going.
We need to be this new thing. And this new thing is this other space, right? Where you are welcomed and you could lounge and you can work and you can eat and you can chill and you take a nap and like, it's this. And you're seeing offices kind of turn into this space and you see offices being like, oh, we need to look at hospitality.
And you see, it used to be that hospitality looked at retail, right? Hospitality used to suck. And they used to be like, oh, retail is doing all the innovative stuff. And that's how Barry got me. He got me at a Nike cause I was doing retail stuff and, and then Haas and then, and now, and now everyone's catching up.
Everyone's, you know, every, every, uh, place is starting to look like you sell a house. Right, right. Everything. Everything's a lounge. Everything everything's got like the [00:23:00] low
Dan Ryan: coffee tables that my back hurts at work. But that's just me getting older and not being, not doing a yoga class at Equinox before.
Aaron Richter: It's true. I'll send you some links.
Dan Ryan: Well, it's interesting. So I just spoke to, uh, Dina Lamana I don't know if you know her she's at HOK. And she said that she's getting pulled into yes, that's the hospitali version into every other silo to see everything through the hospitality lines. And as you're talking about, I forgot you were at Nike.
So retail it's totally true because Barry also pulled Teresa and and a whole bunch of other people that Hillary and from pottery barn. That's right. And, uh, w
Aaron Richter: so when I, when I interviewed, I tell the story, I don't know if I told you this story. I want to interview with, uh, I got a call from the headhunter who was calling for Starwood and, and she and I was, I wasn't working.
It was after nine 11. My mom passed, I had just died. I went to Japan for awhile. I was like, I don't want to work. And so I didn't work for like eight months and I got a call from her head on her and she said, Hey, you want to do hotels. And I'm like, I don't know how I've [00:24:00] never done a hotel retail guy. And she goes, that's exactly what they're looking for.
Someone with zero experience. So I was like, great. So I went there, I went interviewed Barry and he said the same thing. He's like, I don't want you to have any knowledge of the industry. That's a detriment. I don't want you to have done a hotel before he goes, I like Niketown. That's what I want to do. I want to do stuff.
That's like Niketown, which is experiential. That's immersive. That's thought provoking that bends things and breaks things. He goes, that's what I want to do. So I was like, yeah. Great. And then what's funny. When I left, when I left hospitality in a weird way, I'm still kind of in hospitality. I guess when I left, when I left Schrager's office to go to, uh, Equinox, Harvey's.
Yeah. I like look, army, I got zero fitness experience. I'm gonna get an zero. And he's like, that's what we're looking for. Right. Right. So twice, twice it's my, my ignorance has propelled my career. Yeah. It
Dan Ryan: reminds me, I love that. There's a book I read years ago, it's called rookie smarts. And it's like how someone who is new to the business, either just out of [00:25:00] college or an intern or someone from a different sensibility with no experience that they look at things through with fresh eyes.
I know, you know, prejudice. And, um, it's interesting how you've done that. So like, if you go back to like mentors of yours, who do you, who do you, who, who do you think was like the, the biggest, uh, mentor or course corrector, um, and your career path and journey
Aaron Richter: I've been super. I mean, like I got to say, I've been super fortunate.
I, you know, I, all the way early on it was John Hoke. I, John Hoke is a. Yeah, I think he runs all creative and Nike. Now he's a genius. And he was one of the youngest guys at Nike. Uh, uh, and he was an architect. And by, you know, he was also, he was dyslexic. So he didn't write a lot of his dreading. His drawing is dry, everything all the time.
And he was the guy I would be working all nighters at Nike. And, uh, he w he would come by my desk, you know, as an architect, you just do all nighters. That's what you [00:26:00] do. And it's how you get ahead and dumb, but that's what you do. And, uh, so I did an all-nighter and I'm at my desk. I'm looking like I did an all-nighter and he comes by, he's like, and I'm working through lunch.
And he's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, yeah, I'm just, you know, working on this thing and I'm trying to do something cool. And I'm trying to get ahead. And he goes, oh, he goes, whoa, that's not how you get ahead. He goes, you want to get ahead? You go join the softball team, go run, go run at lunch with the guys, go play basketball, go to the gym, go breathe the brand.
And that's how you, that's how you get ahead. I'll learn. W. And so I did, I joined a run club. I started working out at the gym and I had an Oregon and Oregon Beaverton. Yeah. And I joined the on-call team thinking like softball. How hard could it be? Right. I'm on the softball team. And the, the, the guys in the softball team are all ex Seattle Mariners.
Oh my God. It's like solve a really seriously. And I was like way out of my element. So I was like, oh, I'll just
Dan Ryan: watch. And on the running on the running side where you [00:27:00] like channeling your inner
Aaron Richter: Prefontaine. Yeah, I was just, I was a shade runner. I've always been a shitty runner up until Nike and, uh, I, you know, I played soccer.
I ran a little in, in, uh, in college, in high school, but I wasn't really, I never good at it. And Nike joined the run to kind of a little impromptu club. They taught me everything I needed to know about Nike. And they got them to that point of reaching that first runner's high, which is very elusive for a lot of people.
The first two weeks of running suck, no matter what, whatever they suck, you just got to get through them. And once you hit like 1, 2, 3, you get a moment where you have, you can, if you do it well, you get that moment of runner's high, which you chase, uh, and you can recreate and it's magical. And once you get there, you're like, okay, I can learn technique now and I can learn all these other things.
Um, but yeah, that was Nike. That was Nike, uh, leading the way. Um, it was, uh, it was Sternlicht. That means, certainly can't say enough about that guy. I mean, he's, uh, you know, he was used to kicking down doors early, uh, [00:28:00] early on. He recognized that the industry needed something unique and different and, uh, you know, he's passionate for designers and architects and passionate about industry and what's disrupting.
And I mean, to have that guy just be like, what do you want to do? You know, um, you know, be able to be like, Hey, you know, this is this from, yeah, we'll push your work. What do you think? And he's like, they're great. You know, whatever, they did one hotel in Montreal, but there were, you know, they were young. Um, and he was just like, awesome.
Let's find people, who've never done hotels. Let's find architects and designers who are just outside the industry. Let's just, let's, let's shake some shit up. And he was really supportive and really. Uh, appreciative of, of me coming at things from a, from a different angle. And, uh, I can't say enough about that, that mentor.
I, I, he called me, he saw me a handful of times. Uh, the older I've gotten just for just, you know, shoot the shit and get some off the, off the cuff advice. And, uh, I have a lot of admiration for that guy.
Dan Ryan: Wow. That's amazing. I
Aaron Richter: mean, just incredible, incredible human being [00:29:00] after Barry. I mean, I, I still, you know, as, as difficult as Ian is, I still got a prophecy and for what, what he, what he, who he surrounds him with, who he, what he's willing to do the villi to work at, like just the upper, upper echelon of everything all the time, this, his, his command of, of, of what's cool and what works and what doesn't work.
And, uh, he, he's just late, just incredible. And, you know, with, with, with Ian, you get you at the time you would get on to and Michael and onto Michael, his lieutenants were, I mean, I can't, those are two, some of the findings as human beings on the planet on to Andre. I mean, I can't, I can't say enough about her.
I've I've talked about her a lot. And, um, she was my, she was my mentor for, for a hot second and, uh, just incredible human being. Um, and then of course, Harvey, I would say, so Harvey feedback, you know, just a visionary early on in the industry, uh, on our, uh, from a wellness perspective, you gotta understand like 14 years ago, you know, you gotta, you gotta remember fitness was garbage.
It [00:30:00] was an industry that was forgotten. It was an industry that was like, it was 24 hour fitness and like, Sport like, like primary colors and sports clubs. And like, it was, it was just miserable. And so Harvey recognized early on that there was an opportunity to do something, to make this a luxury thing, and he saw it early and I, you know, I gotta, I gotta give it up to him for, for, you know, providing all of the, the runway to do it.
Do you know,
Dan Ryan: what's amazing as you're talking about those four men, I think it's for hope.
Aaron Richter: I mean, there's hundreds of my friends
Dan Ryan: favorites, but like, if you look at those, let's just say those four. And there, and the lieutenants and the whole support structure around it. Holding into designing and furnishing hotels it's transaction. Right. And in the, at the end of the day, it is, it's a real, it's a commodity within real estate, but of those four, from a retail perspective and the hospitality perspective, they put so much weight in design and, and, and I think [00:31:00] that, uh, on the fringe, so they're kind of leading the way the Pathfinders then on the fringes, you have folks who are just like, okay, well, does this pencil out?
Right. Okay, let's do this. But I really feel like it's those kind of prime movers, if you will, that are really shifting and innovative. Our
Aaron Richter: industry. I would agree with that. And I, and I would say there's a, I think there's a stock index out there that follows companies that, uh, put value on design and they show you how it over-indexes over just a regular old company.
Um, yeah, no, that is a design focused one out there somewhere. Um, yeah. Yeah. Look, I think I, you know, uh, you know, Nike, the designers were gods. I mean, they were gods like on the campus. If you were a footwear designer at Nike, I mean, people will be like, oh, you were like a rock star. It was amazing. You were given like the, you get the, like the prime parking spot.
You have a whole floor people Fredy with such reverence. I [00:32:00] mean, Yes. There's only a handful of people that can do that. Well, and I, early on, I got spoiled and that recognizing the design was important, design should have a place. The table design really touches all disciplines, right? You can't, you can't, you can't just silo out and design and like go in a corner and design something.
It has to be in concert with all the other disciplines that have to interact with your design, that the build your design that have to like live with your design 10 years from now. Like you can't do it in a bubble. Right. And, and I, I think that makes you as, as if you're, if you, as a company, if you recognize that design is important, it has to be at the forefront and it has to liaison with everything else.
Dan Ryan: I totally agree. And I'm also glad that there are those trailblazers and obviously like the Johnny Ives and the Steve jobs or
Aaron Richter: the hotel. I almost said hotel. Yeah, dude. All right. So I was at Schrager's office and I'm like, he's like, who do you wanna work with? That? I'm like Johnny fucking eyes. And he, and he's like, who?
And I'm like the guy who does the apple stuff. And he's like, all right. Yeah, call them. So we call eyes and [00:33:00] I get eyes on the phone and I'm like sweating. And I'm like, oh, to serve, you know, whatever it wasn't Sarah at the time. And I'm like, sure. I was calling him, sir. And, uh, I'm like, we're when we're Schrager, we want to do, I want to do a hotel with you.
And he's like, fuck. Yeah. And, and he was into it. And so for like a week and a half, we were like brainstorming about hotels. I'm like, Aw, dude. I mean, cloud nine, like, you know, thinking about the technology infrastructure, thinking about what apple could bring to the table, all the interfaces. Oh my God. Like a little tear in my eye.
And so we can half go by and he calls me up and he's like, uh, yeah, Steve's not gonna let me do it.
Dan Ryan: Well now he's not there anymore.
Aaron Richter: Well, I could probably do it now. I'm sure. I'm like, I'm sure if I, if I doubt he would remember me, but I'd call him back up. I'm sure he'd be into it. Him and Rob love growed would do something in a minute. That'd be
Dan Ryan: great to, just to just like, be able to peek at what's going on between his ears, right?[00:34:00]
Yeah.
Aaron Richter: Credible
Dan Ryan: cry. That's amazing. Okay. So talking about all these mentors and amazing mentors that you've had, um, as you look at like your position where you are at Equinox unrelated, how are you in a way honoring all of that and paying it forward with your team?
Aaron Richter: I mean, there's how much my team left. Uh, sadly, uh, we, we, we burned through quite a few people during we furloughed for a long time during pandemic, as long as we could.
Uh, we started to try to keep people in health, healthcare, but, you know, I had a 25 person team on the club side. I'm down to four. Right. Yeah, rural. I mean, we have, you know, 106 leases we had to renegotiate. So, uh, you know, it was a tough go for, for industry, any industry and hospitality in general, but the club side, you know, any industry that relied on people coming physically to a space that was hard.
Uh, and so w we had a rough couple of, we had a rough year and a half where we lost a lot of people. And, uh, so yeah, I know, I don't know if the opportunity yet that we're at now, it's [00:35:00] now I'm like, you know, last man standing and, uh, you know, I'm not last man, but I have just a skeleton crew and, and now we do everything.
Now we're back to like, back to the drawing board with all, you have to do everything. Um, so we have an opportunity now. What's nice is that during the pandemic, we'd heard that the statistic was most people that had left their jobs or left their industries, wanted to get into, um, health and wellness, uh, some degree.
So I think we're in a position now where we could certainly, uh, not, not today, but probably a few, few months start really hiring people again, to. To grow this thing. And it's, you know, it's, it's, it's mentorship. It's making sure that you hire someone that has the right intention, uh, that, that believes in it, theoretically that drinks the Kool-Aid to some degree, um, or understands the value of the Kool-Aid.
They don't have to drink it yet, but they done share the value of it. Right. Um, so yeah, again, the, the, the staff has thin at the
Dan Ryan: moment. Well, that's good because, you know, going back to that article that I [00:36:00] referenced, it's why hospitality is the best place to work. Invest in innovate. I been saying that hospitals, like so many people left hospitality for all the reasons that you just said, right?
The gathering places just got eviscerated. Um, however, we're so starved for good people that if you come in and you're passionate and a fit and you love it, the. Trajectory the career path trajectory is so steep right now. It's an amazing place to start, especially if you can get hooked up under a great mentor.
Aaron Richter: I would, I told her that you're your ground. It's not just us. This is a lot of folks. If you're on ground floor, if you're in now, it's like you get in the next year. Right. It's like getting on the ground floor. Like no joke. It's now you're going to be, yeah. I mean, You come in here, you're going to have, you're gonna have 20 hotels to deal with.
Right. It's going to be, and again, you're going to have an L uh, you're gonna have a problem, but you have tremendous opportunity.
Dan Ryan: Um, speaking on the health and wellness side as well. Um, I [00:37:00] was speaking with Sarah Clemson, who she's she's at Hyatt and she's doing like all the Miraval stuff, but she said something that was really interesting to me.
Like if you're going to go stay at a mirror of all right. It's health and wellness, or you're not, but go ahead. No, but if, if you did, if you were going to, they kind of, they onboard you before your stay. Cause you mentioned that. What made me think of it, as you said, intention. So they're like, what's your intention?
What do you want to get out of this? And it's like, it's a weird thing. It makes total sense to ask, but it's, it seems like. Strange to ask that to someone coming to a hotel, because if you know what their intention is, you can design everything else around it.
Aaron Richter: I guess we find that guests don't like that.
They don't want to commit to a particular thing. You know, we have offerings, right. As right as a booking engine goes out, we have, once you book, we, we immediately say, okay, here are all the classes that are happening at property while your stay here, would you like us to get you into a cycling class?
Would you like us to get your group fitness class? You know, [00:38:00] do, can we help you schedule all that stuff ahead of time? But we don't. We try not to, to the guests be like, okay, Tell us all your preferences. And when you get here, we're going to hammer you with those preferences. Like we, we try to be more like it's here for you.
If, should you decide, and we're here to help you engage in any of it, but we don't want to, like, we try not to overmarket you, right? Like the, the trick with our, we have a very well-heeled crowd and they, you know, they're a little sick of being marketed to so where we try to not do that. Um, and not that what they're doing is marketing, but, uh, you know, we find that it's, it's a, it's a fine line to, to over ask what your intention is.
Dan Ryan: Yeah. I, I've never,
Aaron Richter: the intention is not, are not always good. Right? Not always good.
Dan Ryan: Okay. I totally get that. But I think about like, if I've ever been on a retreat or something, like it's a purposeful stay where I want to get something out of it, I want to journey inward. Sure. Learn about myself [00:39:00] a bit more.
And I set an intention for that. So I guess to think about staying. Like a wellness going on a wellness retreat, if you will, if it wasn't just the business travel, it would be an entrant. Like if you could dissect that, it would be interesting to ask, um, and just see without being marketed to,
Aaron Richter: well, we, we, we, we want to think about the, the activities is performance-based right?
So if you have a baseline, uh, that you want to improve upon whether it's sleep or VO two max or your mile or, or, or whatever it is, we can help you improve your, your performance of a thing. Right. As a, as a metric. Uh, and, but, uh, yeah, we can do that for sure.
Dan Ryan: Okay. So then when you talk about performance-based and metrics, another thing, then this was from a couple of years ago, and we were talking where you got, when you're looking, you said something about looking at the programming of, let's say, let's just say like a health club, right.
And, you know, by having a cafe here, this kind of machine [00:40:00] there, this kind of. Classy or you, you guys have really gotten it down to a science of return on investment return on time. And like, how did you, were you just blown away when you came into that at Equinox and by virtue of, I guess it would be related coming, um, from Schrager.
Aaron Richter: Yeah. I mean, yeah, early on, uh, w we wanted like, w it was all about keeping people on property, right? It was about skiing or everything that's going on. Uh, and like we had the living room and w living room, you could see the bar, you could see the restaurant, you could see the elevator banks.
It was a, it was a hub of activity. And we realized is that the people, we wanted people to stay on property, to go to the restaurants and the bars, and, and, and, and that's great for the property owner. Right. More stay on property. And so that sort of like visual cornucopia, if you will, of. Uh, applied [00:41:00] to how we lay out clubs, because what we find is that if you are scripting the S the, the pathway of someone moving to the club, and they're able to see someone taking a Pilates class or applies lesson, and they'd be like, I don't know what that is, but they walk by it or they walk by a training session, or they walked by a Gryffindor students here.
There's a class going on. And they see it. They're much more likely to engage in that. Right. Because it doesn't feel sort of like an alien or unique to them. They're more willing to try it. And so having it's the same as the hotel property, it's like, how do you just visually, uh, create this sort of landscape of opportunities, essentially?
How do you, how do you create this video? What we call it a visual cornucopia, right? It's like, it's a, I'm always able to look at something and see something else and other activity going on. And so we're now blending, blurring those lines between the club, the hotel. An office lobby, uh, and FNB space, like how do you blur all of those lines?
So you're [00:42:00] kind of seamlessly walking from one experience to the next.
Dan Ryan: Um, okay. And then, so, so as you're thinking about that and where you're plotting forward, as you rebuild your teams and kind of get more deals happening in the pipe, what's exciting. You most about the future?
Aaron Richter: Uh, well, I mean, I only got to do one hotel right here, so this is my, I got to do one, right.
We got a bunch of them. We had a ton of hotels we were working on. And so, um, You know, what's exciting is that, uh, we, we finally, after many, many years of talking about it, have a proof of concept. And, uh, that's w we haven't had that before we, we talked about, we could talk a good game, but we couldn't, we couldn't prove it now that we're open and running and, and, and doing very well.
It's it's very easy to prove now. And so the argument about to a developer, wherever they are in the world is, is much easier to make. And so, uh, we're, it's, it's less of a fight and it's more about how do [00:43:00] you maintain quality? How do you maintain, uh, how do you continue to innovate on, on it? And I think because we're only able to do that, the small percentage of the stuff, if you'd like to do like sleep, I think we probably, again, groin a third of what we could've done, but.
You know, we probably could have done a third of what we could have done on all of it. And so what's exciting is the other two-thirds that we've been talking about that we we've already either design and couldn't afford, uh, uh, how, how this works into resort. How does forks into a smaller format? How does this works into a more luxurious format?
How this there's so many different ways that this, this, this can manifest that that's exciting. And when we look at like an 80 room property in more bay area, or we look at, uh, you know, a high density thing in Japan, it's, it's all very exciting. Cause it's a new philosophy.
Dan Ryan: It totally is. Um, and I'm super excited.
And what do you think about the pitch? So you have developers that they've had, they've [00:44:00] acquired this land. They want to build something there. What is the value proposition to a developer? Like what kind of conversations do you have with them about like, why Equinox makes the most sense? Well, what were the hooks.
Really getting them interested and excited.
Aaron Richter: Well, I mean, the F the first, the first hook is certainly the brand, right? The first hook is saying to them, there is a history of 30 years of, of, of fitness and wellness excellence that has been bar none top of the industry. Right. You can point to that. And what that means is that we have a existing member base and a member base is no longer with us that knows, understands, and has spent money with the brand.
Right. So instead of having a marketing pool of, of, of, you know, not like-minded, Yahoo's right in your marketing pool, if you might have a ton of them, but there's no comp, uh, communal thing between them, no commonality. Right. So you don't really have [00:45:00] a pool. You've got a database. Like we have a pool. We have a, we have a pool of like-minded individuals that are all fundamentally optimistic.
You need to be optimistic to be in there. It's your tribe, it's your tribe. We generally have a tried that we can talk to him point to and who trusts us to give them product that they, they, that they can rely on. So that's fantastic. Right? We've got a big victim brand recognition. We don't have in hospitality space for trying to get in the hospitality space, but we have it out there.
So those folks are generally, well-heeled generally early adopters of technology. They're getting. They're there typically a 50, 50 split men, male, female, that the right money demographics. So they're, they're the, you know, the creme de LA creme of people you want to try to get in terms of your, your, your market base.
So that's, that's built in, what's tricky with developers is, is that we have 106 locations and, and we don't want to cannibalize ourselves. So that, that makes it tricky from a real estate perspective. Right? So if you, you can't just drop a hotel anywhere, [00:46:00] you know, tell you gotta be considerate of the existing facilities that are active and running and doing well.
So you can either buy air rights. You can find shit next to them. You can, uh, do it that way. Or you can be smart about new markets and you're developing a club and hotel at the same time, which is ideal, right? So that. What that, that trickiness also is a tremendous advantage for a developer. Right? So developer, what a developer does is it's particularly mixed use to sort of spread the risk around.
They want to have a refill podium, a because the municipality wants them to activate base or B, they, they, they don't have another use for the ground floor. Right. And so what we do as a brand, and we're one of the last big box tenants out there, right. Who's taking 35,000 per feet. Ooh. Whole foods. Okay.
Maybe whole foods, right? There's only so many of those you can do trader Joe's, trader Joe's. Sure. Grocery stores we'll do, we'll do that size, but then it quickly drops off. Right? It used to be that gap [00:47:00] would take it right. That is not happening anymore. Right. Retailers don't want 30,000, 35,000 square feet.
It's, it's, it's a ridiculous thing to, to, to try to take on as a retail tenant. And so. So as a developer, you're like, well, I got to build all this retail and I don't know, I don't know the names. So they slap an apple logo on it. They're like, oh, apple will take it. You like, apple is the one, your, your shitty thing there, you know, whatever, they've got their own things going on.
And so th there's the, the re the developers are sitting on all this like empty retail. And so us coming into the anchor tenant, not only does that take off a big honk ground floor, it activates the ground floor. It butts footfall on the ground floor. And then it also entices other retailers to take the adjacent adjacent retailers.
So all of a sudden, you know, now all of a sudden when we did our, our club in the marina in, uh, in San Francisco, on union street, you know, we opened the club a week later, Nike opened up a retail shop, two doors down, right. They knew we were in flow and the halo [00:48:00] effect. And so we argued with the developers that we are, we are now a halo effect.
And what that means is that you can, uh, not only get all these retail tenants sorted out, but you can also. Talk about your project as a wellness project, you can talk about how your building is a community project. It's a wellness project. It's a, it's a project about sustainability, right? Because ultimately we don't turn over, you know, the, you know, we, we take long-term leases.
We, we we're we're, we were invested in that location. Uh, and so that, that's a tremendous advantage for, for developers. The hard part is we're also we're acoustically psychotic. And so being crucible and psychotic means you gotta be a smart about how you build your walls smart about where you put your elevators.
You gotta be smart about your facade. You gotta be smart about a lot of things, your mechanical systems, uh, and that's expensive day one and more, a little bit more expensive to operate. Sometimes they too. Uh, and that's an ask and that's, that's unique.
Dan Ryan: [00:49:00] Um, I want to go back in time to when. You were playing on the Nike softball team.
Was that your first job out of college?
Aaron Richter: Uh, yeah, I, yeah, it was, I had an internship, so I got, I got wait-listed at the GSD at Harvard and I want to go to Harvard my whole life and I got waitlisted and I was excited. I got wait-listed. They, I was for those listeners because MRT, they only accept about 15 people.
And typically about one of them was an American, maybe two. So I was psyched to be wait-listed, but I really wanted to get in. And so I got into Columbia and I deferred Columbia should have gone to Columbia. I didn't go. And so I waited the side away to the summer. I had to wait the summer to see if I got into the GSD.
And so I had three months to burn and I had designed a footwear. Uh, in high school and in college to pay the bills. So I was, you know, on the side, I'd be doing work for socket and converse just to pay the bills. And so when I w I was like, well, I'll just, I'll do footwear. I'll make some money and try to save up some money for our wording.
And, uh, I applied to this [00:50:00] internship at Nike and I got in and I got out there and they're like, are you going to design shoes? You're going to design spaces. And I was like, I, okay. I didn't know, space is an option here. I thought I was just gonna design shoes for three months and make some money. And so, uh, like I was a part of John hoax image team and mission design.
And, uh, and that was my first real, I was an intern, you know, all the interns stuff that goes with it. Uh, and that was my first gig. And, uh, after three months I GSE said, no, yeah, you're not know you're not going to in here. And so, uh, I've, you suck, you suck. Right. And I've been right now, you know? Good. And so, and then Nike was like, you just want to stay.
And I was like, all right, they worked out. And it felt like, and then, and, and at the end of the summer, they were like, you still. You still, if you want to, you can still go be a footwear designer or you can go to this other thing, which is image design. And at the time you gotta understand that the footwear designers were like, you know, they're driving like vintage Ferrari's and shit.
And then in the parking lot, you're like, well, do I want to be a rockstar? But, uh, I ended up picking the [00:51:00] architecture route just because of my education.
Totally.
Dan Ryan: Well, as you were talking about playing softball on the, on the T on the team with like a bunch of Mariners, right? There were former Mariners. I, I once played my brother stepbrother.
He asked me to play on his, uh, dad's. It was like from Riverdale high school or whatever. It was like a dad softball team. And I was playing second base and center field. Tiki barber. So everyone else was just like a normal human, but he was there. Oh my God. I just remember one time and I played baseball. I love baseball.
I'm re moderately athletic. Um, there was just like a little blooper hit kinda over me. I could have Def I was running back to get it. I would've gotten it just right in the grass there, shallow grass. I felt the ground like moving and Tiki barber was playing like deep center. And he, like, I was sprinting to get it, but like in four in like, I don't know, eight or 10 [00:52:00] steps, he was right there.
And I thought he was going to take me out. He caught it. And then in the same motion, threw it at home. Cause someone was holding up on. Some of them tagged up and was going to get there. And he, in one motion, it was so athletic. He threw it, nailed the guy at home and it was just incredible. So going back to your experience, like, it's you with all these crazy athletes playing softball, let's say the Aaron of that I'm talking to right now, the Aaron of today, 2022 teleported back there.
And you spoke to your younger Aaron on that team. What advice? What advice do you give yourself?
Aaron Richter: It's okay. You lose this game. That's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Um, yeah, I would, I would say, um, uh, don't do anything traditionally. Don't don't, don't take don't, don't go down the road. Well-traveled and, and I, and I would say, you know, stay on this sort of path.
And my path is very, very different than most of my colleagues paths. Um, and I'm very grateful [00:53:00] for it just because it's not the traditional path. Like I, you know, I could have just went. Worked from Meyer's office or I's Peter Wiseman's office for, I could've, I could have done, you know, you could have been a Lackey for a famous architect for five, 10 years is what most people do.
They go work in them. And then they, like, if they're lucky they get enough clients, they steal them and they, they do their own firm. And, and then when they're, when they're 50 or 60, they start their own practice and they start doing good work. And for me, it was like, okay, it's going to take too long. I don't want to do that.
I want to do something I wanted to, I wanted to have an impact sooner, and I wanted to have a larger impact rather than just project based. And so a lot of times, you know, on Nike, you understand, as an architect, you're trained to be the, um, the agency, right. You're trained to be the per person doing the work at Nike you're in-house and you are the client side.
And so all my buddies, they're all working for architecture firms and they're all just like others spending other people's money and Nike, you spending. And so you have to way closer to how the performer works have to be way closer to the [00:54:00] project, uh, numbers. And so that, that was a whole mindset shift.
That was, was good, that it was out of the norm that I was on in-house on a client side thing, which was really atypical. And then I went and I left, I went back to the agency side for a while and I worked for a couple of companies. And then I would, when I went back and I, I liked the clients side better because, you know, I can tell the money what to do.
Right. And I can't do that. I want on the client side, it's too late. You're too late. And the client's like, well, the, the, the, sorry, on the agency side, actually on the client side, you can define how you spend the money. They can go hire the talent. You can manage the talent. You can control a lot more than what happens in the world if you're, if you're on this side.
So I would, I would say. It's my younger self stay on that side. Don't don't try to go up the ivory tower and be a poet. It's your you're going to be, you know, you're going to be this happy and you're gonna affect this much. It's going to be great. It's gonna be this much. And for me, I always wanted to affect more.[00:55:00]
It was weird. It's it's it's it's actually from a footwear moment. I had, I designed this sock and a shoe called the . The tongue was too big. It was didn't work. It was, it was fine. It was okay. But I, I remember I was driving around new report and I saw a dude running in one. I saw I do running in a pair of my shoes and I, I can't even tell you.
My heart was racing. I was like, oh, this is my, she's my shoe. That's just one of my shoe. Like there's incredible moment. And then when I remember when I rewrote my, uh, application to GST the second time thinking in a second time, by the way, the rewrote it, I talk about that moment about saying, yes, you design your design is this, but it affects something much, much larger.
And I always had that in my head that I, you know, I won't want it to affect a larger, uh, I wanted designed to impact a larger portion of what I would be able to do otherwise if I was just like, uh, you know, designing a shop somewhere, I
Dan Ryan: love that. Stay on target.
Aaron Richter: Stay on target, stay on [00:56:00] target. Yeah. How you pulled it off.
Yeah,
Dan Ryan: we, we, to, you know, you gotta, you got good by practicing a target practice on with your and tattooing, right. That's right. That's
Aaron Richter: right.
Dan Ryan: Yeah. We had to get the star wars references. Um, so as far as your restoration and your, you know, obviously your routines, I've heard you say routines a lot. And what, like, what is your morning routine?
Like on a typical morning? Do you have
Aaron Richter: three kids? You kidding me? I'm like, I'm like eyeballs and fruit loops. Um, Uh, yeah, I used to, I mean, I don't know my routine is when my wife wakes up typically before I do, uh, bless her heart and she, uh, she's up doing stuff. She usually tries to get it running in the morning before we even wake up.
My routine is terrible right now. It's not good. It's um, it's not a balance. I, you know, I, I, I, I had an amazing routine during COVID. I had [00:57:00] a very healthy COVID oddly enough or health, very healthy pandemic that I took to running quite a bit during, uh, during the pandemic. And, uh, that routine was fantastic.
And, you know, if you can take. Uh, you know, an hour at two in the afternoon and go for a run. It's epic. It's, it's, it's, it's magical. Um, and, uh, I've, I've fallen off that. Now what I do now, you know, when I'm between injuries, I go downstairs and I've got an incredible trainer, uh, at Hudson yards and he's, uh, he's opened my eyes to a bunch of stuff in terms of my movement and my, my physicality, you know, you know, you know, you get old and crusty shits just starts falling apart.
And, and, and a lot of it's just maintenance and recovery and making sure that you can continue the movement and you don't have to throw as much weight around, but you, you want to stay limber and an active. I definitely do that. Um, I've got, uh, uh, I got, um, hardtail carpet hardtail that I throw around every now and then, which is fun.
I'm threatened my, um, the Pyrmont guys are threatening me with a [00:58:00] road bike. So I should probably take that up at some point. Um, I'm leaning into all the old man sports. I'm like, you know, paddle boarding and like kayaking, backpacking, right? Those are my, those are going to be my sports going forward. I
Dan Ryan: used to run so much more and, um, this Memorial day, it was my wife.
Who'd never ran a race. My son and myself, there was a 5k in town. And, uh, my time, my goal was to just finish and not injure myself. There you go. Um, I didn't get the time I wanted, but it was so funny. My son who'd never run a race before he like came in second in his age group in 30 overall. Wow. Um, my wife he's 12, 12, my wife.
She'd never done a race. And I was talking to some other dads, like, as we were running and she kind of pulled up ahead of me and I was still talking and I was like, you know what, I'm going to try and beat her. And, uh, so I, in the last, I don't know, half mile, three quarters of a mile, I caught up, I was right on her wing.[00:59:00]
And then I was like, you know, I'm not going to beat her. I'm going to finish with her. So within a hundred yards, I pulled up, she had ears or earbuds in and she looked at me and smiling and running and then like 10 feet from the end. She just took off and fucking beat me.
Aaron Richter: You deserved it on so many levels.
Now you realize
Dan Ryan: Alexa, Ryan.
Aaron Richter: Yeah. Well, my, my, my, I had injured my back, so I didn't participate in from my, my, my, my family and my wife and my oldest. They did a 5k together and, um, you know, yeah. I, I woke them up. I was all my idea. Right. So I will come up and lay it's 5k, get up, get up. And I, then I made them run this 5k and they bitch bitching the whole way, get the bibs on they're angry and they do it and they're done with it.
And then they couldn't be more proud. Like it was like, oh, look what we did. I'm like, you didn't fucking, you would've been asleep right now. If I didn't kick your ass out of bed, but now, now they want to do them now they're kind of into them. Um, so yeah, no, it's, it's, it's great. I think running for me has been sacred.
I can't [01:00:00] do it as much as I would like to anymore. Uh, so it's going to be cycling and it's going to be hiking and that kind of shit.
Dan Ryan: Um, it's also good in that. I re-injured, I did my first race in years. Right. And whatever, it's a 5k. It wasn't the time I wanted it. But the thing I love about running. And it goes back to, you're kind of taking your own path.
It's all about, it's all about me or you, or whoever's doing it now. I have a time and now I can metric, I can run and improve that based on whatever I want. Like running is sacred and I miss it a lot. It's good to get back into it now. I just don't want to get injured.
Aaron Richter: Yeah. I T what's interesting is my summers, as a, as a teenager, I was a boy scout and I taught at this thing called lone tree scout reservation up in New Hampshire. And I taught, uh, riflery and archery.
And I was with this British SAS guy who was my mentor there. Uh, and I've learned a lot about riflery and whatever, but, you know, the, the riflery in above itself wasn't it was interesting, [01:01:00] but it wasn't what was interesting to me, what was most interesting was both of those sports require body control require breath control require require breath, require mental focus, require you to control your body.
And it was my first way to say, oh, if I looked inward, I can improve. And running's the same way running is like, it's a battle with yourself, right? All the time. It's a battle with is my form, right? Am I, is my mental head? Am I in the right head space is my pick of my knees up. And my, you know, you know, my, my hands loose or my shoulders back and my chest, you know, all the, the, the technical aspects of it to make you a better runner, you can focus on those things and, and, and, and have a better run for sure.
Dan Ryan: Totally. Well, now you've inspired me. Put on my shoes this afternoon, even though normally I'm a warrant a morning runner. Um, so Heron, if people wanted to reach out or learn more about what you got going on, w what's the best way for them to [01:02:00] find you. Yeah.
Aaron Richter: Don't don't don't ever contact me. No, don't please don't call me for sure.
And I got a lot of like nonsense emails about, and I appreciate that people are vendors and they want to sell shit. I get it. But, um, I mean, LinkedIn is the best way to do it. If someone wants to say something to reach out is the best way I don't, you know, we don't carry business cards anymore. It's kind of over.
Um, and so LinkedIn is my network. It used to be, I, you know, I'm on Instagram, but I don't, I don't, you know, I don't love it anymore. Uh, it kind of resented, so, um, Yeah, it's, LinkedIn's
Dan Ryan: the best. Great. And then, um, as you guys are rebuilding and hiring again, I guess it would be like careers.equinox.com or something like that.
They can find
Aaron Richter: things there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we definitely post there. Um, I'm not, I don't really post much. I, I, you know, once I have a role that I want to fill, like, I, I have a pretty, a pretty good bench I could pull from if I need to. Uh, but again, [01:03:00] I'm always looking for talent. I'm always looking for people out there that are, are hungry and innovative and doing good things.
I'm a, I'm a very, very tough critic. So if you show me your portfolio, be prepared to tell me that, uh, that'll tell you that it sucks, and I'm going to tell you how it can be better. I'm not just gonna say it sucks and kick you out. I'm going to tell you how it can be better. And so, um, uh, you know, but I'm going to be honest.
I'm very, very brutal when it comes to when it comes to design. Great.
Dan Ryan: Well, and, uh, I think you've learned from some of the best, so I want to say. Thank you so much for your time. This has been freaking awesome.
Aaron Richter: I always love talking to you. I
Dan Ryan: appreciate it. It's awesome. Um, and then also, I just want to thank our guests.
This keeps growing and growing and growing. So if this changed the way that you think about design or hospitality or wellness, please pass it along. It's all word of mouth. And, uh, we look forward to seeing you next time.
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